Well, where should we start? Life has been
very hectic over the last couple of weeks what with work and social
activities. The most exciting thing was
that we had our first visitor….The lovely Christina flew up from
Melbourne. It was perfect timing as our
neighbor had just got some work out bush and left us to use his panel van! That
was pretty funny, us 3 girls squashed along the front seat, looking like proper
locals.
We headed out to the West
MacDonnell Ranges to a place called Ormiston Gorge, where we did a walk, which
was beautiful, even if we didn’t read the large CAUTION signs stating that the
final part of the walk required a 1km swim to get back to the parking area. Needless to say we weren’t prepared for that
so had to backtrack for 2 hours!!
We all
ate and drank a lot (with Chris making fresh pasta in her tiny cabin and
draping it over every available chair), visited local markets and laughed a lot! It was very sad to see her go, everyone is super
friendly here and we are having a ball, but its lovely to spend time with
people that really know you.
Then came the Bang Tail muster parade,
which has been going since 1959, which is a fun community parade. 
Bang tails are the hairy end of cattle tails
which after muster were cut from each animal with a sharp knife and counted to
tally up the total muster. The early
parades were named in the cattlemens’ honour and the name stuck. 
Then came the Ulysses bike clubs AGM, so
the caravan park was filled with every type of bike/trike imaginable, along
with trailers and numerous other fancy items.
It was so noisy! They did a ride
through Alice (all 1500 of them) on the final morning which was amazing.
As I mentioned last blog, we are both
working girls now…..
So there has been a lot less time for fun
activities over the last couple of weeks, although I did win free tickets to
the AFL last Saturday. Port Adelaide
were playing the Melbourne Demons in Alice as part of Indigenous round. Darwin has hosted the last 5 years, so it was
great to see Alice get a turn. Lyndi was
working so I took Phil (one of our neighbours at the park) it was a great
afternoon.
The Finke desert race is on over next weekend, it's an off road,
multi-terrain two-day race for bikes, cars buggies and quads from Alice to the
small Aputula (Finke) community. It is
one of the biggest sporting events here in the NT, and it has the reputation of
being one of the most difficult offroad courses in one of the most remote
places in the world!!
Lots of love to you all from us xx
